


Lead You Home

by lymongrab



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Drifting, M/M, PTSD, Physical Abuse, Trauma, chasing the rabbit, german science husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymongrab/pseuds/lymongrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Newt and Hermann will never tell anyone about their drift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lead You Home

 

It always started and ended with the drift. 

 

It would begin with a soft blue light that emanated from every surface. He’d turn his head and see him, a four year old Newton trying to wrap his fingers around the neck of his uncles big acoustic. A six year old Newton, his tiny body amongst a sea of older students, standing on his chair to be seen over his taller classmates, correcting a teacher. A ten year old Newt, sitting alone in the lunch room. A fourteen year old Newt graduating from high school. His first kiss, his first drink on the night of completing his first doctorate at seventeen. The receiving end of a punch from an MIT TA who didn’t appreciate the boy genius and his saucy remarks. 

 

Hermann saw it all, but he also felt it all. The booze, the fist, the lips, the metal strings. 

 

Suddenly everything would snap into colour. It was a week before the assault on the breach, but everyone moved slowly, strangely like they were on a nickelodeon being cranked backwards.

 

He and Newton arguing, Newton on the floor bleeding and nearly catatonic. Rushed words whispered in German, just in case, just in case.

 

Running to the marshal. Newton announcing he was leaving for the bone slums and if he didn’t come back… “Not returning isn’t an option Newton, the world needs you. Without you, it is lost…” I need you. I am lost. 

 

Running the numbers, again and again, the same each time. Why wasn’t it working? Why wasn’t it matching up? Why wasn’t it happening as he’d known it would, as the numbers had sworn to him it would? And then it was happening, all at once.

 

In the helicopter. On the ground. Picking his way through the detritus. And then there he was, standing before Hermann, soaked through, bloody, ragged, not much more than a drowned rat, yet to Hermann, he was the most beautiful creature to have ever ensnared his glance, just because he was alive.

 

Rushing together, making amends, hands touching, heart fluttering. The PONs cold on his forhead, his neck, The blast of light. Back on the LOCCENT. Saving the world.

 

The next part was always warm. Warm and heavy like a thick sweet syrup.The part after they save the world. Everyone shouting and hugging and smiling because we made it. Looking out of the corner of his eye at the smaller man, accidentally catching his gaze, Newton slipping an arm around his neck pulling him close, Tendo Choi fading away, the LOCCENT fading away, everything fading away. 

 

Drinks. Newton's hand on the small of his back as they stood and cheered Raleigh Becket. Drinks. Newton's arm around his waist as they greeted Mako Mori. Drinks. Holding Newton's hand as they consoled Herc Hanson. Drinks. Drink to the fallen, Drink to the living, Drink because were here. Were still here. Together.

 

At last when they could drink no more, Newt walking the empty corridors of the shatterdome's residential block wih him. Standing in front of the heavy weighted door. Where where his feet? The white and brown oxfords seemed a million miles away when he looked down at them, and as he looked up here was Newton's face, inches from his, too close, the warm, boozy breath on the other man's lips suddenly so close to his own he could taste it, green eyes behind glasses staring up at him, scruitinizing him like a specimen. But he was no specimen, “so lets prove it to him.”

 

Lips connected. The energy, the hate, the envy, the endearment, the subtle pining of ten years, crackling like electricity on their mouths. Hands grasping, his long, thin fingers tangled in Newt’s wild hair. The hair was so soft. He could feel it still. 

 

The days that followed were like cream. Smooth and thick. Sun. He remembered the sun on his face. Newton tracing made up constellations between the freckles on Hermann’s thin arms. Everytime they locked eyes, two minds humming in tune, two hearts beating in perfect time. The drift had helped it, oh yes, it had been the spark, but the room had been full of gas long before the explosion. They were drift compatible. But then again, they’d always been drift compatible. 

 

They were the days after the end of days, and the celebrating turned into coping, learning to live in the new world they’d made, the new world that wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t gone in together. Drink. And another. And another. Newton’s wide grin, he could get drunk just off of that, but he’d never say so. Drinks with Choi, Drinks with Becket, Drinks with Hanson. Raise a glass to the dead, to the living, to the life we knew crumbling away.

 

A sharp buzzing sound. That smile again. 

 

Buzzing

 

He turns around as the colour drains from the world, everytihng an ice blue. Kaiju Blue. Kaijus, monsters, the buzzing of their minds, buzzing shrieking, screaming. BLOOD. BLOOD. ELIMINATE. DESTROY. DESTROY. Clawing at his ears to get the buzzing to end. DEATH. EXTERMINATION. DESTROY. PURGE. PURGE.

 

The buzzing doesn’t stop, it only gets louder and he looks up not to see a sea of monsters, but a sea of faces. Young boys looking down on him yelling, shouting, calling him cripple, broken, Gottlieb the Gimp, faces sneering down, paper, pencils, raining down on him, marbles, even books. The yelling grows louder. The buzzing won’t stop. 

 

He can feel the tears streaming down his face, the rain of small missiles pelting him; one hits him in the temple, another hits him in the eye. He clutches his now tender face and tucks his head into his arms. The buzzing shakes his teeth, his bones vibrate, and Hermann thinks he’s going to fall to pieces.

 

And then it stops.

 

This is the point in the memory where the teacher wordlessly leads him to the headmasters office, but when Hermann looks up, it's not who he expects. Even after all these times, it still surprises him.

 

Newt is standing before him hand extended. “This isn’t real. This isn’t you anymore.”

 

Hermann looks down. He’s no longer a ten year old boy in a school uniform, but Dr. Gottlieb, the first Jaeger programmer. Dr. Gottlieb, the world’s last hope. 

 

"We don’t have time, Hermann, you have to come with me."

 

"H-ow… Where…" He feels nauseated.

 

"I think it’s what the Jaeger pilots call Chasing the Rabbit. Come on, dude, we don’t have time. Let’s go." Newton flashes him a wide smile, and Hermann takes his hand, i'ts soft and warm, the blue is fading to black….soft…..warm……

 

Hermann opens his eyes to blackness. A cool sheen of sweat cocoons him like a second skin. Next to him is the warm, soft outline of Dr. Newton Geiszler, sleeping on his side. The vividly inked rendition Trespasser on Newt’s right bicep rises and falls, as his steady, rhythmic breathing starts to calm Hermann’s nerves. In, one two three. Out, one two three. 

 

Hermann peels back the bedclothes, and limps to the sink to get a glass of water. The bright white light of the bathroom is sobering, and he lays his hand on the cool countertop to steady himself as he drinks. As he shuts off the light and hobbles back to bed, he finds Newt propped up on one colourful arm, eyes still bleary with sleep. 

 

"Was it the dream again?"

 

"Go back to sleep, Newton, it was nothing."

 

Newt pauses as Hermann limps back to bed.

 

"is it the… does it happen the way it really happened?"

 

Hermann sighs and sits on the bed. “Parts of it, yes. Other parts are just memories. Things that happened, after. But the beginning and the end…they are the same. They’re always the same.”

 

Hermann settles back into bed, and Newt throws a sleepy arm over him, and yawns, "So then you know I’ll always be there to get you out. I’ll always lead you home.”  

**Author's Note:**

> WOW THIS DID NOT START OUT AS AN ANGST PIECE??????????????? HOW THIS HAPPEN?????????????


End file.
